The Rule Against Collusion in Divorce Proceedings

The Rule Against Collusion in Divorce Proceedings makes the divorce sought by Susan Munro and Marco Polo a legal performance as well as a private arrangement. Marco pays for the case, but the lawyer warns that neither party may admit to having conspired to obtain the divorce; from then on, Susan must appear to be the only client, and Marco must keep away from the lawyers.

Legal Obstacles and Urgency

Marco Polo had married Susan Munro in an Indian church but had not familiarized himself with the country’s laws. With his visa nearing expiry, he wanted to leave Calcutta, yet ending the marriage through the courts would take more than a decision between the spouses. A divorce required effort, time, and money; the claimant had to attend court, and witnesses had to be found. When Marco asked how long the process might take, the lawyer said it was impossible to know and could last as long as two years.

That uncertainty sharpened the conflict between the formal process and Marco’s urgent wish to leave. His question about whether Susan would be accused of adultery before a court was not merely hypothetical: the couple proceeded with an adultery petition, making a prescribed legal ground the public account of a divorce they had privately arranged.

The Petition and the Warning

Marco paid the lawyer, and Susan’s divorce petition, based on adultery, was filed. On the day they were due to sign the application, the lawyer explained that the petition had to state that the parties had made no arrangement with one another to secure the divorce. The lawyer identified such an arrangement as collusion and warned that suspicion of one could be dangerous.

The instructions imposed a strict separation between the apparent case and the financial arrangement behind it. No one was to know that Marco had paid to obtain Susan’s divorce. From that point, the lawyer said, Susan alone was the client; the lawyers had not seen Marco, and he was not to write to them, even by mistake. The secrecy did not remove the collusion; it dictated how carefully the parties had to conceal it.

A Legal Rule as Narrative Pressure

The account of the warning reaches the narrator through Byron’s narration. Byron pauses after recounting the lawyer’s instructions, and the narrator, in a dirty alley near Eliot Road, feels almost as if he were watching a film at Cine Metro. The shift makes a procedural warning feel like a staged scene: the petition requires the couple to perform independence precisely because their private cooperation would put the case at risk.

The evidence establishes the filing and the lawyer’s warning, but not the court’s final decision or whether the divorce was granted. The rule’s force lies here in the constraints it places on the couple’s conduct: a lengthy proceeding, attendance and witnesses, an adultery claim, and a prohibition on admitting that the divorce was jointly arranged.